


Daedalus

by Trell (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Biopunk, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Friendship/Love, Gen, Graphic Depicitions of Illness, Major Illness, Teenagers, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 10:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Charlie is the first to see the two boys staggering towards the edge of town at sundown.</i>
</p><p>In which Castiel is sick, the planetary law enforcement is too close on their heels, and Dean will do anything it takes to save them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daedalus

Charlie is the first to see the two boys staggering towards the edge of town at sundown.

The world is cast in shades of fiery orange—the red sand of the wastes, the sinking sun huge on the horizon, the sky without a trace of blue, gone all bruised purple and yellow—and at first they're just two dusty-colored specks on the horizon, making slow progress through what remains of the hulks of old derelict starliners.

She watches them with interest. One is wearing a big hat and a ragged coat that hangs down to his ankles, ending just soon enough to show shoes that are all the wrong size and clearly full of holes, and the other one's dressed a little lighter. He has slightly better boots, too, almost as good as hers; hers got made new, the rubber melted down off a useless old tire to make new soles.

Charlie spits thoughtfully on the ground, and hops off the low sheet metal fence she's balanced on. "Hey!" she calls, and, "hey, y'shits, where'd you fuckin' come from?"

The head of the taller boy—the one in the good boots and without a jacket or hat, despite the fact that during the day the sun pounds down without mercy—jerks up at that. He's got a perpetually angry sort of expression, like he's worried all the time despite the fact that he can't be more than fourteen. "Aren't you a little young to be talkin' like that?" he calls back, gaze defiant.

Now that they're closer, Charlie can see that the other boy is leaning heavily against him, like he's about to drop. His head is down, face hidden under the wide brim of his hat. By the looks of it, he can't walk on his own. "Hey," she says, letting the insult slide in the interest of wariness, "he sick?"

"Maybe," the taller boy says, and frowns intensely at her, like he thinks she might run and get someone to keep them out of the town. (He'd be right.) "He's not contagious."

"How d'ya know?" Charlie asks, and makes a protective hex sign with her hands at the drooping boy in the trench coat.

"I know, okay?" The taller boy is scowling in earnest, now. His face is red—dehydrated and overheated, probably—and his hair is matted to his head. He looks almost as tired as his friend. "It's just a thing with him. Anyway, we been walkin' for a week and a half and I'm fine. Okay?"

"Okay," Charlie says, dubiously. "Where ya walkin' from?"

The taller boy gives a shrug with one shoulder. "Thataway," he says, informatively, and jerks a thumb over his shoulder with the hand that isn't supporting the other boy. "It matter?"

"Guess not," Charlie admits.

"Good," the boy says, firmly, and then: "you got a doctor here?"

"Yeah," Charlie says. "Yeah, Doc Marvin. Want I should show ya to 'im?"

"Uh . . ." The boy glances down towards his friend, whose knees seem to be folding under him even as they speak. He's only still upright because he's got one arm up around the taller boy's neck. "You think maybe you could get the doc out here? Or help me get 'im there?"

"Y'said he's not contagious?" Charlie squints at him, bringing up a hand to nervously curl a lock of red hair around her finger. "I'll help ya carry him, I guess."

"Notch," the taller boy says, nodding, and mutters something Charlie can't make out to Coat-and-Hat. It sounds like a reassurance.

She walks up to them slowly, because she doesn't have any reason to trust either of them, yet. Drifters from the wastes are more than likely to be carrying weapons, regardless of age. Maybe they'll kill her and take her new boots. 

She keeps one hand near the knife hidden inside her jacket as she helps the taller boy maneuver Coat-and-Hat's other arm over her shoulders, just in case.

"How far?" the tall boy asks, as they start again towards the village. Coat-and-Hat is a dead weight between them, barely moving his feet. "Tell me it ain't on the other side a' town."

Charlie just winces apologetically. The boy swears.

Coat-and-Hat doesn't speak a word.

* * *

By the time they reach the shack that the red-haired girl proclaims to be the doc's, Dean is about one step from passing out.

Cas is a lead weight around his neck—and Dean has no idea how a kid his size can weigh so much, anyway, particularly when they've not eaten anything but ration bars in the last two weeks—and Dean's starting to seriously worry that he can't hear Cas's breathing.

As if on cue, as the girl pushes aside the hanging over the door and they haul Cas over the threshold, Cas coughs horribly. It's wet and deep and it sounds like it _hurts_ , and it makes the girl jump away from him in horror, leaving Cas to slump against Dean; Dean's knees nearly give out.

"Motherfucker!" he says, while the redhead shrieks, " _Marvin!_ " and bolts through a second set of doors at the far end of the room.

Dean barely manages to dump Cas onto a cot by the window before collapsing onto the floor beside it.

Cas coughs into the cot's pillow, which actually looks clean, to Dean's infinite surprise. Maybe this doc they've got here actually knows what he's doing, though Dean's not too hopeful.

Him and Cas, they're not big on luck.

Dean cranes back towards him and mutters, "Don't you dare die on me, buddy."

Cas doesn't respond, but when he shifts Dean sees a splatter of red where he'd coughed against the white linen, and his heart sinks. 

Yeah, he really, _really_ hopes this doc is an actual doctor.

He takes a deep breath, tips his head back against Cas's arm, and waits.

* * *

Dean jolts awake when someone touches his shoulder, and nearly gives the older man leaning over him a black eye.

" _Buddha wept,_ son!" Strong brown hands clasp his shoulders, keep him from leaping off the cot he's sprawled on on a wave of half-aware adrenaline as his eyes snap open. The man keeping him still is on the thin side (though who isn't, out here), graying, and dressed in a doctor's white coat, the sleeves rolled up to expose winding tattoos that stand out pale white on his dark mahogany skin. "Relax!"

"What," Dean says, and, "shit," and, "how long I been out?"

"You've been asleep for three hours," the man says, and yeah, it's dark outside the window and past the drape over the door. "You gonna try and hit me if I let you go?"

"No, sir." Dean figures he'd better make nice, just now: if he wants them to help Cas— "Cas! My friend, is he—"

"He's all right. Not _good_ , but stable now that I've got some fluids into him. And it's about time we got some into you, but I thought it better you get some shut-eye. When was the last time either of you drank? Or slept, for that matter?"

"Uh," Dean says, and now that the doctor's mentioned it his throat feels painfully dry. Wracking his brain, he says, "Yesterday morning?"

" _Shit,_ " the doctor exclaims, and lets Dean go in favor of stalking to the other side of the room, by the tables and racks of medical supplies. Dean sits carefully up—his head pounds immediately from the movement, but it's worth it to see Cas sleeping on the cot to his left—and watches the doctor's progress.

This place is surprisingly well-stocked, for somewhere so out-of-the-way. He wonders who they robbed to get it all, but he doesn't ask. He and Cas are strangers here, strangers being shown _kindness_ rather than being thrown right out of town because one of them is ill, and he's not gonna push their luck.

There's the sound of running water, and then the doctor returns with a full glass and several pills bright in his palm. The water's clean, clean again, clean like everything in this strange, well-stocked infirmary that maybe looks like hospitals are supposed to look like, sterile and all in shades of gray and white. 

Dean accepts the glass with wonder, and frowns at the pills until the doctor— _Marvin_ , Dean remembers now, and he wonders where the girl went—explains, "Just vitamins, son."

"You're bein' awful nice," Dean remarks ( _after_ he's downed the pills, and the water.) 

"Two kids drag into my infirmary in poor shape, bein' nice seems a reasonable thing to do." Marvin sits himself on the empty cot to Dean's right, propping his elbows on his knees. "You sure scared Charlie with your friend's condition, the way he was coughin' blood. I checked 'im out, and, uh, I was hopin' I could get a chat from you on the subject."

Dean clams right up. "Rather not," he says, and looks away from the doc, down at the heat-resistant plastic glass in his hands. 

"Kid," Marvin says. "That boy over there—"

"—Ain't your business," Dean cuts off, and immediately regrets it when the man slaps his own knee in irritation. But Dean can't say: doesn't dare say, even if this doctor is already starting to guess about things Dean doesn't dare let him know. 

"Damn well is my business. I took you in, I'm keepin' both a' ya from keelin' over, that makes it my business." 

Dean looks up at him, and can only think of all the people that have considered him and Cas their business in the past. 

None of them had been good for either of them, but then, none of them had been doctors. Real doctors, not just—

Well.

"Look," Dean says, and drags a hand over his face. His skin feels gritty, and his eyes are dry. "It's not my place, okay? You can ask him about what's goin' on when he wakes up, and let him decide what to say."

Marvin seems, if not placated by this, at least momentarily held at bay. His expression softens. "Yeah, kid. Okay. You two got names, at least?" 

"Dean," Dean says, gruffly. And, nodding over his shoulder towards Cas: "Cas."

"I'm Marvin," the doc says, and holds out a hand for Dean to shake. Dean takes it. His hand looks very small and very pale in Marvin's large brown one. "The girl you met earlier, that was Charlie. Little spitfire. Helps out 'round here sometimes." 

"She helped me carry Cas here," Dean says, and he thinks he's grateful for that. He can't even resent her for being wary of Cas, really: anyone out here dumb enough to go near someone that looks as sick as Cas does would probably die before they got to her age. "I should—I should say thanks. And I gotta do some stuff."

Like find out where they are, and how far they are from the spaceport, and whether there's any chance in hell the local nethub has a good enough range to check his extranet cache for a message from Bobby. 

Provided they have a nethub at all, though looking at this infirmary, Dean is pretty sure that they do.

"Tomorrow," Marvin says, firmly. "Tonight, you stay here and rest up, 'long with him, since he ain't 'bout to go nowhere."

Dean looks towards Cas again, and it hurts just to see him: too-pale, almost gray, with dark bags under his eyes and the veins clear under his skin on his arms and hands now that he's not wearing his coat or his hat. (The coat is carefully folded on the stand beside him; the hat sits on top of it.) His black hair is slick against his forehead with fever-sweat. 

There's an honest-to-fuck heart monitor bleeping away beside him, like there would be in a big-time Coalition hospital. Dean could cry. 

"Are you sure he's gonna be okay tonight, doc?" Dean asks, quietly.

"Yeah," Marvin says, "yeah, he'll be okay, kid. Dean. You sleep. He's gettin' what he needs, like y'should be."

And Dean does feel tired, so tired, the minute he allows himself to consider it, same as with the thirst. Every muscle is heavy with fatigue, and his eyelids are drooping, and for the first time in what feels like eternity he can rest without having to watch his back for someone looking to gank him and Cas and steal all their rations and what's left of Dean's credit chits. 

That this place of safety is in a strange place full of strangers a thousand miles from what used to pass as home isn't lost on him in the slightest.

"Yeah," he says, finally, and lies back down, slowly, so it doesn't feel like his head is being split in two with a pickaxe. "Notch. Okay." 

The last thing he remembers seeing as he drifts off to sleep is the red line on the heart monitor beside Cas oscillating steadily on.

* * *

Charlie picks her way between the closely-pressed huts of the town with care in the pre-dawn light, hunched into herself against the chill. Hot during the day, freezing at night: all par the course for the wastes. In just a few hours she'll have to shuck her jacket and either get out of the full sunlight or slap on cream against the intense UV.

There's not that much of that to go around, though, and she hasn't got any big errands from the chore board, so she'll stay inside during the hottest part of the day, as most everyone does.

While the weather is on the crux between hazardously cold and hazardously hot, though, she's going to go see the weird boys in the infirmary. She'd freaked out when the little one had started hacking up blood, but Marvin had said it was okay, that she couldn't get what he had, and so she'd stuck around a little while the boys slept, watching Marvin work.

Marvin says if she pays close attention she might do what he does one day, but there's so much to remember that Charlie doesn't think she could. There's no rhythm to fixing a person, not like there is to fixing a machine: no set instructions or readable code.

The tall boy is creeping out the infirmary door just as Charlie rounds the corner of the two-story adobe structure that sits beside it on the path. On instinct, and because she's pretty sure Marvin didn't say he could go, she calls, "Hey!"

The boy nearly jumps out of his skin. Charlie sees the aborted motion he makes towards his left side: knife, she thinks. "What the fuck," the boy says. "You scared the shit outta me."

"Where ya goin'?" Charlie reaches into her coat pocket for the half-finished bacco bar she knows sits there, and bites off a chunk to chew. "Marvin said you were sick, too."

"Not like my friend is," the boy says, and he's all frowny again, eyebrows knotted. "I just needed some sleep." His skin, she notices, is red all over: a burn from being out during the day without block cream.

Stay out too long, and the sun'll kill you. If he's been out for a week and a half, like he said, she's almost impressed he doesn't look worse, but maybe he had block some of the time. 

She's terribly curious, either way: curious at where they came from, and how they got here, and what it is this odd boy and his friend are doing. She wonders if he's a thief.

Maybe they're fugitives and she can turn them in for a reward. Mom would probably like that: the Coalition pays well for thieves and cutthroats escaped from the Center.

(It's funny, she always thinks, that they'll come out here to get their own criminals back. It's not like the wastes aren't full of plenty to choose from, all on their own.)

"Are you a killer?" she says, because she can't think of anything better to say. "I could report you. I could check. Maybe your face is all over the net."

The boy looks spooked for the fraction of a second, but then his mouth twists into an annoyed grimace. "You think I'd get this far if my mug was all over the Coalition cortex?"

"Maybe," Charlie says. "You're small." (He's almost a foot taller than she is. She says it anyway.)

"Shut up," the boy says, and crosses his arms. "Where's your public nethub?"

"Who says we got one?" Charlie asks, squinting.

The boy rolls his eyes. "You got an actual doctor and actual medicine. With, like, actual medtech. There ain't _no way_ you ain't got a nethub."

"Fine," Charlie pouts, and gestures vaguely behind herself down the path that winds between the shacks and larger buildings. "C'mon," she decides, "I'll show ya." 

She almost thinks he's not going to follow her as she turns around, but when she looks over her shoulder he's stalking sullenly after, only pausing to cast a glance back at the infirmary door. 

They end up walking side by side as she navigates through the town, kicking up dust with her big new boots as she goes. He's yawning, though he looks a lot less tired than he did the day before. she asks, "Sleep good?"

"Oh, yeah," the boy says. "Notch." As an afterthought: "You're Charlie, right?"

"How'd you know that?" She spins to face him, immediately paranoid, hand going at once to the knife in her pocket. Maybe he's a spy: maybe he's one of those cybernetic freaks Mama Oona talks about, the ones that can read minds because they're tuned into other people's frequencies. 

"Whoa, whoa!" The boy jumps back at the familiar gesture of reaching for a weapon, though he doesn't go for his own this time, keeps his hands open-palmed in a show of peace. "Calm down, damn it, Marvin told me."

"Oh," Charlie says, because that makes sense, and lets go of her knife handle, patting her jacket back down against her sides. "What's your name?"

"Dean," the boy says, and sticks out a hand to shake, as though he's an adult. Charlie rolls her eyes empathically and offers a fistbump instead, to which he readily converts. 

"Nice to meetcha," she decides, because even if he is some kind of psycho killer on the run from the Center, it's nice to see a new face in town. Being on the outside of the inner ring of the wastes doesn't exactly lend itself to a lot of thru-traffic. 

Dean says, grudgingly, "You, too, I think," and follows her as she turns back around to lead him on down the road. 

It takes only a few minutes for them to reach it, and it's visible over the low crowded rooftops sooner than that, what with the massive hulk of satellite dishes and communications equipment it is. The central pole is hardly visible under the junk that hangs off of it; Charlie knows from all the times she's been made to clamber up there (as the smallest person capable of handling a wrench) that half the stuff is obsolete. 

The access terminal sits at the bottom, wired in to all the functional equipment up top, and Dean gives her a thankful half-grin as she puts in the town passcode (because there's public and then there's _public_ , right) and stands aside to let him use it.

He turns a little less friendly when she remains hovering over his shoulder, watching his every move, because, well. Potential psycho killer still means potential reward. 

"Shag off," Dean says, and tries to shove her away; she sticks out her tongue at him and plants herself more firmly on the spot, dodging out of the way when he tries to push her again. "Damnit, I need to check my cache, and I can't do that with you hoverin' like a fuckin' street-washer bot!"

"This is the wastes," Charlie says. "We ain't got washer bots."

"That's not the point," Dean says, and kicks her in the shin. It doesn't hurt, much, what with boots that protect her legs half-way up to the knee, but she screams anyway, her voice loud in the morning calm. He actually covers his ears from the shrillness of it, which makes her grin and stick out her tongue.

"No, I take it back," he says, glaring. "Definitely _not_ nice to meet you. Fucking pixie. Shag off, I said."

"Or what, you'll kick me again? I'll scream louder," Charlie says, and smirks at him. "They'll come runnin' and I'll tell 'em you tried to kill me, and they'll believe me 'cause you ain't from here."

" _Fuck_ ," Dean groans, and presses a hand to his face. "Fine. _Fine,_ you can stay." And then he's typing away at the terminal keyboard, logging into his cache. 

It turns out there's no messages waiting for him, anyway, which makes Charlie disappointed and Dean decidedly worried as he trudges back up the path towards the infirmary. He seems to remember the way pretty well; Charlie only has to point him the right direction twice. 

"Who were you waiting on?" she asks, as they walk. "Partner in crime?"

"My uncle, actually," Dean says, and heaves a sigh, cramming his hands into his pockets. "He was supposed to message us days ago."

"Maybe he's dead," Charlie says, cheerfully.

Dean gives her the kind of glare that suggests he might actually stop and strangle her on the spot, but keeps walking. " _Bobby's not dead,_ " he growls. "He's just—busy. With things."

Charlie shrugs and skips after him, chewing her bacco with gusto. "Kinda things?"

"Things," Dean insists, and then they're at the infirmary and he's stomping his way in through the door, pushing the cloth cover aside.

It almost smacks her in the face as she follows him inside, but it's worth it, because Dean is the most interesting thing that's happened to Charlie all year.

* * *

Cas is still out cold when Dean enters, pixie-girl close on his heels, and he's terribly glad for the quiet beep of the heart monitor, then. He's had too many mornings in the past several months where he'd come back from a food run to Cas lying so still he wasn't sure if he was still breathing; having something definite and immediate, not to mention someone competent (enough) to watch over him while Dean is gone is a relief. 

Still, he tells himself, they can't stay here, no matter how hospitable the town might seem from how they've been treated by the doc.

Right now the doc is in the back room, seated sideways to the door and looking intently through some sheaf of papers. Dean figures that's as close as he's gonna get to privacy, here, and goes to sit carefully on the edge of Cas's cot, so he doesn't disturb his sleep.

Cas's eyes flutter slightly, anyway, despite Dean taking care not to budge him. Over his shoulder, Charlie quips, loudly, "Does he talk? Is _he_ dying?"

"Yeah, he talks," Dean hisses, trying to cue her to lower her voice; the invasive questions, all hitting too close to home, are starting to get to him. "And no, he's not, not if I can fucking help it. Now _shut up_."

"Touchy," Charlie complains. She shuts her mouth, though, which is good enough for Dean.

Quietly, Dean finds Cas's hand where it lies limp at his side and presses it between his own, murmurs, "Hey, Cas. Cas, can ya hear me?" The gesture is almost muscle-memory, reassuring like he used to do for Sammy, when he still had to look after his brother the way he now looks after Cas.

But Sam's safe now, and if Cas used to be able to go without anyone taking care of him at all, that's all a long time past.

Cas makes a soft sound, and Dean reaches over to grab his hat off the nightstand, setting the brim over Cas's eyes so it's not painfully bright when he opens them. "Hey," he coaxes, "it's okay, I got us somewhere with a doc, Cas." 

"Dean," Cas croaks, and then he's pushing himself up on his elbows to lean over, away from Dean and Charlie, to cough out what sounds like the entirety of his lungs.

Behind Dean, Charlie backs up, for all that she knows that what Cas has isn't communicable. Dean just grasps his shoulder, helping keep Cas steady as he hacks and gasps and spits blood onto the floor.

When Cas has finally settled—after what feels like years of shuddering coughs that wrack his whole form, making Dean wince—he manages to rasp, "Dean, where . . ."

"Somewhere safe," Dean says. Remembering the name he'd seen on the nethub, he adds, "Arbor. Town called Arbor. Inner ring of the wastes, Cas. 'Member, we were walkin' for over a day towards the next GPS blip?" 

"Yes," Cas sighs. "Yes, I remember." His hand tightens against Dean's; his face is lined with worry. "Are you _sure_ we can stay here?"

Dean can only emit an exasperated snort. "Cas," he says. "You ain't even up to gettin' up on your own. What the hell's it matter if we can or can't stay when you can't leave?"

Behind him, Charlie asks, with interest, "So what're you runnin' from?" When Dean twists around to glare at her, Cas blinking owlishly over his shoulder, she's grinning sharply at him, her chin resting on her hands. "I'm thinkin': maybe your ugly mug ain't all over the net, but his is. He talks all Central."

Dean goes cold, and probably turns as pale as Cas. He goes through his options on instinct: tell her, and hope she's not as cutthroat as she seems (definitely his least favorite option); don't, and get out of here as soon as Cas possibly can (though Dean's not sure when that'll be, and deep down he's terrified that Cas won't be able to leave at all); go on the run _without_ Cas, and hope that the doc doesn't narc everything he's learned through his medical exams to the first Coalition enforcer to ride into town—

"Don't," is what comes out of his mouth, rough with anger. "Dammit, don't. If you try an' look 'im up, I'll kill ya. I'll slit your throat while you're sleepin' and no one'll be the wiser."

Charlie sticks out her tongue and says, "Ya couldn't touch me," even as both he and Cas glower at her from where they sit.

It's funny, Dean thinks. Just a few months ago Cas would probably have told him not to threaten a kid, but right now—the other boy's just as tensely wound as he is, mouth a flat line, breathing ragged. "I'll kill ya," Dean repeats, steady, and holds her gaze. 

He thinks he would, if he had to, but he doesn't like to think about that. Dean is fourteen years old and he's killed three people in his life, but none of 'em were kids. 

Charlie actually looks kind of like she takes it seriously this time, eyes widening and then going slitted as she squints at him. "I'm gonna tell Marvin you threatened me. They'll throw ya outta town."

"Damnit!" Dean explodes, because he's just so _tired_ , and he wants more than anything to be able to stop somewhere for more than a night.

Somewhere where they don't have to be crammed into a crate with no room to move and Cas helplessly coughing blood onto Dean's shirt; somewhere where they're not plodding slowly across the wastes in impossible heat, wondering if every movement on the horizon is a mirage or a bird or a chopper on patrol. "You stupid bitch," he starts, hands curling into fists.

It's Cas that grabs him by the back of the shirt to restrain him, even as Charlie surges up from where she's sitting and puts up her little fists like she's going to take him on in a boxing ring. "Stop," Cas growls, in the gravelly tones that can only be achieved by someone with truly fucked-to-shit vocal cords. To Charlie, he says, "We will explain, if you listen." 

Charlie doesn't back down. She doesn't go for the knife Dean's pretty sure she's got tucked inside her jacket, either, though. "What's to explain," she asks, suspiciously.

Which is when Marvin sweeps out of the back room, cutting the conversation short. "Charlie," he booms, grasping her by the shoulders and steering her towards the door, "I need to check on my patient, now that he's awake."

"But!" Charlie squeaks, and "Wait!" Dean yelps.

"Later. You," the doc points to Charlie, who's stopped truculently by the door, "sit outside and wait, and don't go doin' anythin' stupid. And you," he juts a finger towards Dean, "don't threaten our kids, or I _will_ have you outta this town faster 'n you can blink, with or without your sick friend."

Charlie whines, but gets successfully evicted, spitting curses as the doc nudges her out the door and lets the hanging fall back into place. There's a sudden quiet as he turns back to look with interest at Cas, who's fallen silent, expression hooded.

Dean doesn't even think about it as he shifts protectively in front of him, frowning intensely. "What?" he asks, defiant. He wonders how much the doc heard, and what he's managed to put together between this conversation and whatever he's already got on Cas.

"Y'all are in a heap a' trouble, huh," the doc says. It's not a question.

"Ain't," Dean bites off. He and Cas have a policy: don't tell anyone anything, ever. Particularly not anyone older or bigger than themselves, which is just about everyone.

Compared to the doc, Charlie almost seems the better alternative. 

"Look, kid." The doc raises an eyebrow at him. “Why don’t you go cool off, and do whatever you gotta do? Or get some more rest, like you should be? I’m gonna look over your friend one more time, and—"

"No," Dean says, firmly. “I’m not leaving him alone." That much he knows for sure: running out to use the nethub while Cas is sleeping is one thing, but leaving him alone to medical tests is another.

Cas doesn’t even protest, which either speaks to their current level of paranoia or to the extent of his fatigue. Neither is particularly reassuring, though at this point ‘paranoia’ is really just common sense.

The doc actually throws up his hands. “Fine," he says. “But move over, 'cause I can’t be reachin’ ‘round you every damn time."

Dean obliges, moving to Cas's other side, and watches like a hawk while the doc kneels down to press a stethoscope to Cas’s chest and has him breathe (ending in another coughing fit, which results in a fine mist of red over the doc’s fine white coat. Dean feels weirdly satisfied for a minute, but reminds himself that this guy’s helping, no matter how nosy he is.)

The doc runs a few more tests after that—Dean recognizes a few but not others, and Cas just follows the doctor impassively with his gaze, not looking at Dean. The routine of medical procedures is familiar to both of them: they’ve avoided clinics, lately, but at the start they’d seeked them out almost every time they stopped at an outpost.

A few had been real clinics, not unlike this one; others . . . a half a dozen times the infirmaries Dean had looked into had had drug dealers but not doctors, and surgeries full of biohackers and implant junkies. One had contained a man that had seemed amicable enough right up until he’d tried to strap Dean down during the night to cut out his kidney.

Dean had cut him across the face in return, tearing the man’s eye up bad, and then he'd dragged a half-lucid Cas out while the man screamed and flung surgical implements. It hadn’t been a good night. 

The doc finishes after maybe fifteen minutes, and stands in the middle of the room with his arms crossed (red splotch just visible on the lapel behind his sleeve) and his eyebrows raised at the two of them. Dean capitulates first: " _What._ "

"Pretty far from home," the doc remarks, "aren't'cha?"

Dean shrugs, and then Cas speaks directly to the doc for the first time, words slow and thick with pain. "We're heading to meet his uncle at the spaceport," he says, and Dean recognizes it as their stock story. The first part is actually pretty close to the truth, if you strip away all the gory details. "Parents died in the Center during a quarantine raid." That part isn't.

"Bullshit," the doc says, and starts to pace back and forth at the end of the cots. "You, boy," pointing accusatorially at Cas, now, "ain't got no parents, nor uncles, nor any call to be outside the Center."

"So what?" Dean's hands fist at his sides. Of course the doc's no better than everyone else, really. "You gonna do somethin' about it?"

"What difference would it make if'n I did?" The doc makes a face, looks directly at Cas. "Boy, you're dyin', an' maybe Center doctors could save ya, or someone on on of the inner rim worlds, but out here—and with how long it'd take ya to get off this world even if ya made it to the spaceport . . ."

Dean can see the way Cas pulls himself up, back ramrod straight, his whole posture suggesting stubbornness even though he probably can't stand on his own. "I intend to make it. I will." 

"Kid . . ." the doc looks pained, and Dean wants to punch him. No one needs to tell Cas his chances: he knows them well enough, he's the one that's constantly feverish and, oh, _hacking up blood_. 

"Shut up," Dean says. "Shut up. Look, are you gonna let us go on our way or not?"

He's ready for the doc to grab them and lock them up and call in the patrolmen. He's already planning: knife, syringes, sharp objects on the counters.

"How can I?" the doc says. "Kid, I let you go back out there and he's gonna die in a day."

Dean tenses further. He can reach the heavy-looking metal box sitting on the nearest counter before the guy grabs him, he thinks. "So what're you gonna do?" he asks, even as he readies to spring. Getting out of here with Cas in tow is going to be hard, but Dean's done it before: the key is to knock out the person that presents the biggest threat to their escape.

"By rights," Marvin says, stopping at the foot of Cas's cot, "I should be callin' in Coalition medevac." When Dean twitches visibly at the words, he puts up a hand and hurries on, "But I _won't,_ 'cause it's clear to me that whatever you boys are runnin' from, you ain't interested in goin' back to the Center, is that right?"

Dean doesn't answer, just presses his lips together and clenches his teeth. If rule number one is to never tell anyone anything, rule number two is to never confirm their suspicions. 

Plausible deniability.

"Look," the doc says, when Dean continues not to answer. His tone is exasperated. "I get it, okay, you're not gonna talk to me. But I can't let you walk out, because you're gonna get this boy killed." 

Dean's hands itch with the need to drive a fist into the doctor's stupid affable face, graying beard and all. Dean's the only reason Cas has made it this far: it's everyone, every _thing_ else that's been trying to get Cas killed. He wants to scream it to the rooftops: _no, you bastard, I'm gonna save him._

Instead, his hands just twist in the sheet covering the cot, channeling the anger raging through him into the action.

Rule number three is, when you can't fight your way out, play nice until they look away long enough for you to run. 

"How long?" he says, just in case there's a chance in hell that this doc will let them walk away. Dean's still hyper-aware of the heavy box on the counter, but he's changing strategy, now, planning how he might sneak away during the night to steal a desert-runner or an antigrav sled for them to drive the rest of the way.

The doc hesitates, and that's when Dean knows that what's going through his head is _until Cas dies_ ; that's when, right then and there, Dean decides there's no way they're staying here any longer than they have to, and there's no way in hell he's gonna trust this guy past the basics of medicine.

"As long as it takes to get him back on his feet," the doc says, and Dean could probably smell the lie a mile off.

He spares a glance for Cas, and finds dark, tired blue eyes meeting his. Dean is definitely not the only one hearing the meaning behind the doc's hesitation, and if the intensity of Cas's stare is anything to go by, he doesn't want to go along with it, either.

Aloud, Dean says, "Okay. That okay, Cas?"

Cas nods, not bothering straining his pained throat to agree. 

"Good," the doc says, flatly, flopping down into a chair by his medical shelves. He gives the two of them a baffled look. "Buddha wept, but you're crazy, to have come this far like ya are. What is he to ya," and he gestures at Cas, even as he looks sharply at Dean, "that you're willin' to drag hun'reds of miles across the wastes with him, huh?"

"He's my friend," Dean says, bluntly, because that's all there is to it, in his view. He scoots close to Cas, already plotting the details of his escape route, thinking of the antigrav sled he saw padlocked down by the nethub. "I owe 'im."

"Must be a hell of a debt," the doc says, and shakes his head. Dean doesn't answer.


End file.
